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Swann Galleries is a small auction gallery on the Upper East Side of New York City. On Tuesday, October 25th, 2016 two photographs by nineteenth-century photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron will be included in this auction, Art & Storytelling: Photographs & Photobooks, an auction featuring examples of the medium from its inception in the early nineteenth century through contemporary works.

I was lucky enough to be able to visit Swann Galleries yesterday on my lunch break at work before the gallery closed. I expected to see Kate Keown's albumen print by Mrs. Cameron. However, I was happily surprised to see May Prinsep dressed as Cenci staring right back at me. Well, we meet again future, Lady Tennyson!

From the Neikrug Gallery, New York, New York; to Frances and Donald Werner, New York, circa 1975.

A stunning print by Cameron in a scarce circular format. Cameron's
circular prints were known as "tondos" (from the Italian rotondo or
"round") and reference both Renaissance work and the Pre-Raphaelite
paintings of her contemporaries.

This poetic work was the one
of the first "life-sized heads" Cameron executed with a new
larger-format camera and trimmed to the circular shape. Although
Cameron's pictorial style continued to embody an inherent romanticism,
this enlarged print size allowed her to render a subject more
dramatically and pursue an investigation of the effects of sculptural
lighting on her subject's faces. Her reliance on soft focus, intimate
perspective, and slight movement imbue these portraits with startling
life and spiritual resonance. She wrote in 1866, "I have just been engaged in that which Mr. Watts has always been urging me to do. A Series of Life sized heads--they are not only from the Life, but to the Life, and startle the eye with wonder & delight." (Cox 64-65).

In Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs
(J. Paul Getty Museum, cat. no. 875), scholar Julian Cox locates a
carte-des-visite version of this portrait, a reduced albumen print in the
Isle of Wight County Council Miniature Album, a print at the Yale
University Beinecke Library,
and a
large-format print in the Gilman Collection (which is now at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

From the Neikrug Gallery, New York, New York; to Frances and Donald Werner, New York, in 1975.

Interesting to note that the gallery does not include any mention of the sitter by name.

She was May Prinsep a niece, on her father's side, of photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron.

To learn more about the young woman posing as Cenci, you can read my article on, May Prinsep Tennyson

Guido Reni painting the portrait of Beatrice Cenci at prayer in prison

by Achille Leonardi (Italian, 1800-1870)

Oil on Canvas

Cameron based the pose, drapery, and sad expression of her model on a
painting attributed to Guido Reni. The subject is the 16th-century
Italian noblewoman Beatrice Cenci who was executed for arranging the
murder of her abusive father. One review admired Cameron’s soft
rendering of ‘the pensive sweetness of the expression of the original
picture’ while another mocked her for claiming to have photographed a
historical figure ‘from the life’. (Victoria and Albert Museum)

When in Rome, in 1819, a friend put into our hands the old manuscript
account of the story of The Cenci. We visited the Colonna and Doria
palaces, where the portraits of Beatrice were to be found; and her
beauty cast the reflection of its own grace over her appalling story. --Mrs. Percy Shelley

Julia Margaret Cameron often directed female models to represent tragic
heroines whose sorrow made them beautiful. Cameron composed this image
around the sitter's downcast eyes and scrolling hair--which spills out
from under a turban. Cameron's niece, May Prinsep, plays the role of
Beatrice, the central figure of Percy Bysshe Shelley's play, The Cenci
(1819). Prinsep's sorrowful expression conveys the character's
resignation to her fate.

Beatrice Cenci, the daughter of a
Roman count, lived in Florence during the late 1500s. After Beatrice
conspired with her mother and brother to have her father killed, the
trial brought to light his cruelty, which included an attempt to rape
her. Although the story won public sympathy, the family was nonetheless
executed. Cameron was fascinated by this true story and made several
photographic studies based on it (Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California).

To learn more about the entire auction and photographers, Swann Gallery

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I am a writer and Independent scholar of Victorian studies. I research the personal life of Alfred Lord Tennyson, his wife and sons. Also, I am interested in the life of pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and her sitters.
My article on May Prinsep was published as part of the Julia Margaret Cameron Bicentenary Conference, University of Portsmouth, UK. I have given talks on Alfred Lord Tennyson in the US and UK. My articles on Alfred Lord Tennyson have been published on various blog sites as well.
I’ve written guest post articles on author websites from notable nineteenth century authors ranging from: The Bronte Sisters to Jane Austen and those fascinating Pre-Raphaelite artists and muses.